


If After Every Tempest Come Such Calms

by NeverwinterThistle



Category: Dishonored (Video Game)
Genre: Fluff of the worst kind, Gratuitous happy ending, It's a wedding, M/M, Shoot me I am ashamed, and nobody is invited
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-10
Updated: 2013-05-10
Packaged: 2017-12-10 23:34:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,649
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/791464
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NeverwinterThistle/pseuds/NeverwinterThistle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Who wants to live forever?</p>
            </blockquote>





	If After Every Tempest Come Such Calms

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ripuku](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ripuku/gifts).
  * Translation into Русский available: [Всегда за бурями такой бы штиль](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5107706) by [Gianeya](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gianeya/pseuds/Gianeya)



> This would never have happened without Ripu's prompting, so it's either her fault, or to her credit. You decide. It became an accidental sequel to [Sea and Stars](http://archiveofourown.org/works/707962) somehow, though reading it isn't necessary. Don't kill me, Dishonored needs all the weddings it can get.
> 
> Credit for the title goes to Shakespeare, I am eternally glad he will never see this.

"What do you think of eternity?" Dim lights; distant ships and a distant moon. The Outsider's form is a shadow on the rocks at his side.

 

Corvo's clothing rustles as he shifts, folds his arms behind his head and looks for patterns in the Gristol skies. The wind whistles, whispers, and waves roll slow and unending, like heartbeats. The tide is coming in.

 

Corvo tilts his head to look at the Outsider, as best as he can make out. He blends so well in shadows, soft edges and blurred features, an inky obscuration on otherwise dull grey stone. Harmonic, like whales at sea; he melds the colours of their world to sit in a comfortable palette around his sprawled form.

 

What would he give, to never leave this place? He can breathe, here. Here the distant birds caw and call, and cool salt breeze clears the city smoke from his lungs.

_Inhale, exhale. There is no time, here._

The world is an oval from where he lies, arched and endless above his wondering eyes. He wonders, and wishes to wander, to each and every star that shines so bright and far and free. The walls he built from secrets, shame and solitude, all crumbled like sand under the patient tide and blew apart like wisps between his uncaring fingers. There is no suffering, here.

 

His voice is soft, measured by the wind and waves, and no louder.

 

"I don't. It's everything, everywhere, and for all time. That's not something anyone stops to think about."

 

He can't see the Outsider's smile; it's in the rustle of grass and _cree cree cree_ of crickets in the darkness. For a second the air is warm and dry, and smells of Serkonos vines and roasting chestnuts; these are the smiles he has come to know.

 

"You think of _me_."

 

"Constantly."

 

"There is no difference."

 

"I suppose not."

 

Light, dimmed. A lone cloud obscures the moon and Corvo closes his eyes for one languid moment; he floats in solitude, but this time there is no cage. Once his world was the extent of ten paces; less when the rain fell and flooded a full third of the little space he could claim to himself. He dreams of bright eyes and twitching noses, tainted slops and gnawed loaves; the watchman's drum-beat _tramp tramp_ by which he measured hours, when the stars were clouded over.

 

"What do you think of death?"

 

He opens his eyes, and there is no cage. Those dreams are rarer now. "Depends on the kind. I'm against anything painful, but most people don't get a say in the method."

 

"It could have hurt." He knows the Outsider's moods and whims, as sailors know the tides. Sometimes he is cold, endless ocean abyss, and others he is sunlight on the waves, bright and joyful. Sometimes he is _here_ and only here, and those black leviathan's eyes see only Corvo (it feels a little like gazing up at the sky, only to find it looking right back), and others he is a thousand, thousand fates and futures, scattered between what was and was not and could have been, if only.

"So many times, and in so many ways. Missteps that left you smashed on the cobbles, bullets you could not dodge, Weepers that stunned you, rats that devoured you, had you been a little slower."

 

"But I wasn't," Corvo says. "I was as quick as I needed to be."

 

"Had you been quicker, the Empress might have lived." Sometimes he is neither deity, nor consort, but spiteful as a child, pulling the wings from moths to count the ways in which they writhe. Corvo shifts in place, the rocks at his back suddenly sharp. "You _could_ have saved her. The assassin's blade would have split your flesh like a whaler's harpoon, stunned you and sliced you, drained your life with its withdrawal. It would have hurt."

 

Silence; Corvo counts his own heartbeat and licks his lips. Salt, not blood. All the difference in the world.

 

"I would not have liked that eventuality," The Outsider says at last, and the wind blows cold and bitter against Corvo's cheeks.

 

"Is this your way of telling me you'd mourn if I died?" Corvo ventures. The chill seeps through his clothes, bone-deep and biting, a kiss from the Void.

 

"It is not in my nature to mourn."

 

"Don't be stubborn."

 

"I offer you _eternity_. An absence of ending, the cessation of existence; we need not part, and so I need not mourn. And yet you refuse. Am I the stubborn one?"

 

"You're the impatient one, certainly. I haven't said no; I need more time to consider."

 

"I cannot protect you from your own mortality, Corvo. Of the countless possibilities ahead of you death features as often as survival, and I _cannot_ know where your choices will lead you." Frustration bleeds through every word, and the crickets all fall silent as one.

 

Corvo's lips twitch, though the cold makes him shiver. "Would it be that difficult to just admit you care?"

 

Exhale, a soft sigh in the pool of shadows to his right. "There are times when I despise humans."

 

The Outsider moves like oil on water, like the razor-toothed sharks that stalk the fishing boats and lunge when sailors least expect them. Lightning on a stormy night, a whip-quick flash in the darkness, and he pins Corvo to the rocks with an arm on either side of his chest.

"And you are the worst of them," he breathes, and like the wind he bites, taking Corvo's bottom lip between sharp teeth. He tastes of salt, is seconds from drawing blood, and Corvo tilts his chin, bares his throat and waits. Once his instincts would have screamed, his heart pounded and fists tightened in self-defence, but things have changed. He is safer here than any other place in this world.

 

"Is that why I fascinate you?" The mouth on his throat traces a line down his windpipe, finds his pulse and stops, counting. Always counting. He tracks the pounding of Corvo's lifeblood, measures it like sand in an hourglass, and frets to find there is never enough. Anything less than always is nothing.

 

Rocks and ragged grass, crushed and pressing against his bared spine, and it would have helped to keep his coat, but it lies somewhere off among weeds where he threw it. They never get this quite right, but then things are never quite the same. Sheets clenched tight between the Outsider's fingers, a wooden desk under Corvo's hands; rugs at the fireside in the cold winter nights, stars and sky in summer evenings. He scrabbles for purchase at pebbles and dirt; the crickets are singing again.

 

They have found a balance somewhere, or as close to the usual give-and-take compromise as man and not-man can achieve. The Outsider's skin warms where Corvo touches it, and he shivers deliberately at fingertips brushing over his ribs and hipbones; real or not, neither of them care. He does it for Corvo's smiles, for the ragged groans he swallows with inhuman hunger.

 

He likes the things that mark Corvo as _other_ to himself. Strange things, simple things; feigned irritation at the Outsider's unexpected manifestations, closing his eyes during kisses, deliberate care where none is required-

 

_You don't need to be so gentle, Corvo. What little damage you may cause is easily remedied._

_I'd rather not damage you at all,_ Corvo told him, and didn't.

The Outsider likes abandonment and Corvo gives it, wraps his legs around a slender waist to pull him closer, _deeper_ , follows the steady rhythm of sweat and skin that is at once both dance and battle. A playful grip  and stroking fingers explore his shape, lead him through rising crescendo; he drags blunt nails down the skin of the Outsider's thighs, shudders and blinks, breathless, up at the silent stars.

 

"You don't understand," Corvo tells him later, while his heart drums itself slowly back into steadiness and inquisitive fingers arrange his hair into odd shapes on the rocks. "All those things, they're _human_. You want to make me something more, but you don't know what kind of _more_ I'll be. What if we're incompatible?"

 _What if you despise me_ , the winds whisper with hollow impertinence. _What if I despise myself?_ He shivers, and this time the cold has nothing to do with it.

 

Somewhere out on the water buoys bob and ropes billow; the whaling ships will be sailing back to port with their leaking cargo. The sky is just beginning to lighten.

 

"I cannot tell," the Outsider admits. His fingers don't stop their slow drag through Corvo's hair. "Every path I see for you is _mortal_ ; all else is veiled by the ripples and contours of the Void. The choice, in the end, must be your own." He leans close to kiss Corvo's forehead, and his mouth is warm.

"I don't know what I'm doing," Corvo says. Pale green on the horizon, swallowing stars as it stretches, grows.

"Then we are equals already."

 

He shakes his head gently, enough to convey disapproval without discouraging the very pleasant scalp massage. "You're not the one risking your life. Or _soul_ , as the case may be."

The fingers tighten on a fistful of Corvo's hair, grip it just short of pain, and then let go. "No. But I risk losing you."

"So you _would_ mourn then?" He searches the shadows for the Outsider's eyes, and when he finds them he does not look away.

 

"Does it matter, if you are not there to witness it?"

 

"Yes," Corvo says firmly, and the Outsider sighs.

 

"I would mourn. I would drown the Isles in bitter ocean, and from the muted cries of the dying I would fashion you a shroud, and bury you in the darkest depths of the abyss. And then I would be very lonely." His lips twitch, the slightest hint of humour. "Better for everyone if you do not die."

 

Corvo reaches up to grasp his chin and tug him closer, close enough for a kiss that says all the things he cannot. Slow, patient, like the tides; he tries to affirm his own permanence, and the Outsider yields to the gesture. He tastes of salt, as he always does. This to remind Corvo of what he is and is not, of what they might both be.

 

Corvo pulls away when the shadows are no longer dark enough to obscure the individual blades of grass on which he lies.

"We'll see," he says quietly, and  the choice is made.

Days pass with a pendulum's rhythmic monotony; dawn to day to dusk to night, the world moves on, and Corvo's time is ending. The Empress has less need of him each month, and her own chosen Lord Protector stands ready in the wings (this one from Morley, the price of peace after the plague's instability froze trade and tore treaties). He will not leave her lonely. Emily Kaldwin is near enough full grown, and the memories of her mother's fall are faded like the little girl's pictures Corvo still keeps in his desk.

 

He cannot know if she will be enough to keep her family's hard-won Empire afloat, but more and more he wonders. Leash the Serkonan merchant councils, crush the Morlish insurgents, survive Tyvia' dread poisoners; the future rests on a knife's edge, and no amount of council meetings and spy reports make things any more certain. There may be war. There may be unity. No way to tell.

 

The future looks interesting; Corvo expects a good show.

 

Dawn light and the water ripples, shifts grey-blue-green around his waist, and inky black where it touches the Outsider. There should be cold, Corvo knows distantly, and discomfort in the way his submerged clothes cling to his skin, but such things are a matter of choice, not necessity.

 

The sun is pale where it rises and flushes the water white-gold; he still finds it beautiful, and that in itself is a comfort.

 

A sea breeze blows his hair over his face. Corvo pushes it aside, and smiles awkwardly at the Outsider.

"You know, I don't think you've looked away from me _once_ since-" he falters when the words refuse to form and the resulting mess threatens to choke him. There's a black nothing in the back of his mind, barely noticeable except when he prods at it; coiled like a serpent, and it snaps if he pushes too hard. Wincing, Corvo surrenders. It seems some memories are best left to rot.

"The change is a violent one," the Outsider says softly. "Traumatic and incomprehensible, like birth and death condensed into a single moment. I was not....certain of your survival."

"I'm fine," Corvo says. He sees now, clearer than before, and there is wonder in the Outsider's eyes, mingling with uncertainty and something touchingly close to worry

 

The world is new and golden, and they are its centre.

 

He reaches for the Outsider's hands, holds them in his own (and they are warm, he thinks, intentionally made so, and still for his benefit alone), and finds his throat too dry to speak. Some things, it seems, have not changed. If one day he attracts worshippers of his own they will not find him a loquacious deity.

 

"Should there not be vows?" The Outsider tilts his head to eye Corvo, as he does when he discovers something odd, something _human_ that defies his understanding. Strange, to think that there will come a time, distant but plausible, when humans will have changed so much that Corvo will find himself unable to answer.

 

He understands what the Outsider is asking him, and it's a gift he never once expected.

"Do we need them?"

 

Corvo looks down at their hands, still intertwined, and then beyond, at the water. It moves with the breeze and the tide but he can still make out their reflections. Shadows, swaying like dancers. He cannot tell where one ends and the other begins.

 

"They would please you," the Outsider says.

_Yes,_ Corvo thinks.

"I didn't prepare any."

 

"Spontaneity is always preferable to preparation."

 

He has no words for making vows, because all his vows have been given, not made. The Lord Protector's Oath is a matter of high tradition, lofty words and the dust of his predecessors; he meant the vow. He did not _make_ it. No more did he make Strictures, though he recited them with the rest, and those he did not truly mean.

 

There were no vows involved in the-

_but of course, he cannot think of that._

 

Corvo cannot make vows, any more than the sea can make wine, or the skies can make tears. Still, he tries.

"I vow..."

And what does he vow? He cannot offer to remain loyal through sickness and misfortune, when neither applies. He cannot offer a lifetime of fidelity; they have moved beyond such arbitrary, _human_ measurements. What remains to be affirmed?

"I won't let go," he says at last. "I won't cease to exist, I won't be parted from you." His voice firms as conviction grows; Corvo lifts his chin, and what he says becomes simple truth. "I... _forsake_ eternal rest, and whatever comes after, and I won't be made dust, or...consigned to the depths. I'll stay. Here, in the Void, both. Wherever you are."

 

Breathing is difficult; there's a pressure on his lungs, almost like suffocation. People weep at such occasions. He knows they do, and now he knows why. It feels a little like loss and a little like gain, a new weight in his mind and heart, a new absence of something he hasn't ever really acknowledged. He is almost as he was, except that he is more, and it aches distantly like thunder on the horizon.

 

In the end, it's as simple as drowning.

"You are the Outsider. And I am yours."

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Всегда за бурями такой бы штиль](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5107706) by [Gianeya](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gianeya/pseuds/Gianeya)
  * [[podfic] if after every tempest comes such calms](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6299800) by [Kess](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kess/pseuds/Kess)




End file.
